Businesses around the Bay Area lose Internet access

An unknown number of businesses around the Bay Area lost all Internet access Wednesday afternoon for about five hours after a piece of switching equipment in the region malfunctioned, according to service provider TW Telecom.

Bob Meldrum, a spokesman for Littleton, Colo.-based TW, said engineers repaired or replaced a switch router that had failed, and affected businesses went back online between 6 and 6:30 p.m.

Meldrum said it was not immediately known why the equipment failed, and that the company is conducting a "root-cause analysis" that should provide specific results within two days.

TW serves 28,000 businesses nationwide, but Meldrum said the outage was limited to the Bay Area. He did not have a number of affected businesses Wednesday evening.

He called the outage "very rare" and said the network is "pretty foolproof."

"We have backup protection, but in this instance that failed," he said.

TW provides service to an undisclosed number of businesses around the region, from San Francisco to San Jose and the East Bay, as well as Sacramento. It also provides phone services, but only Internet access was lost on Wednesday, Meldrum said.

Among those affected was the Bay Area News Group, which publishes this newspaper. But Meldrum said all Bay Area customers were not affected.

He described the outage as "intermittent," and "kind of crazy. You can have one business impacted and another one two blocks away not affected. It's difficult to pinpoint the reason."